


nightfall

by iwrotethisat3am



Series: a light in the room [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24946306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwrotethisat3am/pseuds/iwrotethisat3am
Summary: Right now, everything is Ahsoka. He will take time to grieve over his brothers once the night has finished falling.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Ahsoka Tano
Series: a light in the room [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791976
Comments: 9
Kudos: 108





	nightfall

_His first memory was of his hatchmate, ‘46, stealing his dessert ration. Rex had been angry and gone to the Kaminoans in search of justice and another ration. He could still see the longneck’s face descending toward him, eyes very big and black — very unlike all his brothers — as it scolded not only ‘46, but also him, for tattling — for_ creating dissension _, something_ good soldiers _don’t do —_

 _He ended up swallowing the_ unfairness _of it all, instead climbing back up his bunk and tucking his legs in under his blanket, while Jive and 1518 looked on sympathetically. ‘46 had rolled onto his stomach in an effort to hide his tears. Everyone had heard his muffled crying that evening, and everyone thought to help, but the creepy longnecks kept walking by._

Good soldiers follow orders because they must. Because that is how wars are won. That is how liberty _lives_ , civvie, Senator. All things are connected here and now. You breathe in and out lovely impractical words that wartime does not respect; you wear smooth skin and long lashes and fine clothing that tears, blood, blaster fire would disdain and leave scarred. 

If good soldiers did not follow orders, you would likely be dead already.

_He rarely saw the Jedi. She spent most of her time with the older batches, the CCs, while Rex and others his age (just a year or two younger than the CCs, but that makes all the difference, does it not?) spent most of their time in the company of the Kaminoans and the bounty hunter trainers, including Jango Fett. Jango Fett! Rex puffed out his chest with pride while the bounty hunter swooped up and down the ranks of cadets._ He _called them cadets. Everyone called them cadets. Rex, like the others, would be/hoped to be just like Jango . . . minus the harsh glint in Jango’s eye._

 _Something about that glint rubbed him wrong. Something about the rhetoric, that is. The Kaminoans had told him to_ expunge _that glint in order to avoid more dissension. But that order struck Rex as . . . off. He couldn’t explain it. Nor could he vocalize it. He just — couldn’t explain it! Were the others having these thoughts? He felt different, stark and unique among his identical brothers. He just didn’t know._

_Cadets, Jango called out, voice like a whetstone while Rex, standing there, constituted the knife._

_When the Jedi came by later, she called him and his hatchmates_ children, _not cadets_ . _Rex knew what the word meant, of course, but it didn’t, like, actually apply to any of them, did it?_

Good soldiers follow orders because they are asked to by someone they respect, be that a clone commander, a Jedi, or a chancellor of the Republic. Rex, who modestly will not name himself a good soldier but is called so by nearly everyone else, is no different. That _unfairness_ , that _different thing_ he feels in himself, is easy to ignore when everything seems fair. 

_He met Anakin Skywalker shortly after shipping off Kamino. The man immediately came off as bold, brash — a hotshot eighteen or nineteen years of age. Rex looked only a tiny bit older than his new General, and he was pleasantly surprised to find out that the General acted as mature as he looked. It helped the war pass by more entertainingly — and faster, as Rex was astonished to discover._

Good soldiers follow orders because the orders make sense. Until the orders don’t make sense. They don’t make sense when your brother looks up at you with acceptance and grace in his eyes, refusing to say an unkind word to you although you are prepared to execute him, while the person snarling the order to _fire!_ seems to know nothing but unkindness. But doesn’t that person know more? Rex is meant to trust the person giving orders. They tend to have the full picture, or superior wisdom. While they grapple with greater plans, all Rex sees is the war in front of him. He tries to have faith that everything is somehow, sensibly, connected, even if he can’t exactly see the connections through the shadows of the battlefield. After all, they must connect. If they don’t, then the orders don’t make sense, and he would fail as a good soldier.

_Christophsis and Teth were a long way from Kamino, but somehow they felt like home._

_He’d dyed his hair blond by then; and all his brothers had names of their own choosing — not a single one of them went by a number. They meant more to Rex than he was able to express; well, they meant more to him than he was conscious of. It was good that he was then not fully aware of how much they meant to him._

_He would, one day, look back and remember the chosen name of each one of them while his fingers subconsciously traced the designs they’d painted onto their bracers and cuirasses. While he lived and worked with them, however, it was good that he was not aware of how much they meant to him._

_Made it easier to swallow the loss when the Sith huntress took out all of them but five. Five left, but Rex, the young captain, felt as if he was alone._

What is the point? Fives says that there is one. But if there was one, then someone would have listened to him, wouldn’t they? Did Fives even deserve a chance to speak? Good soldiers follow orders; Fives was supposed to be the best. 

“Stay with me. No, Fives. Fives. Stay with me. _Stay with me_.”

_Orange._

_The sunset over Felucia was more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen._

_The sunset over Coruscant, sparkling with a million million lights, was more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen._

_The sunset on Saleucami, stretching its fingers between the vines and the trees, growing within the children who he had initially thought contained his blood too (but they were too old; yet they were children, as Shaak Ti had called him once. Children, and something stirs tender and soft in his heart), living in the fields and the clouds and lighting up Suu’s and Cut’s faces._

_Cut wasn’t a good soldier. Good man, however. Good kids._

Family, then.

Good soldiers follow orders because they have something they care about, like a family.

He cares about _Ahsoka Tano_ , and right now, she needs help. 

She has burst like fire into his brain.

And while the words of the Senator are beginning to make more sense, thanks to all the connections he can see, thanks to his having stepped into all of time and space everywhere existing within the lines of red blue green purple yellow _orange_ that comprise the Force — he is a part of it; and there is the Senator, watching the fall of the Republic (had it not fallen before then? whispers someone Rex thinks he knows, but this someone seems to live far in the future); and there is the sunset on Saleucami. 

He hopes Cut is alright. The sunset is ripening over the planet, and the children will need to come home soon, before the droids arrive with their orange fire.

The orange sunset; the droid fire. Everything is turning orange.

_The tension was palpable, absolutely_ steaming _off Maul as he was carted into the ship. The Sith’s misfortune was Rex’s good luck, however, and he felt truly understood and hopeful, ready to move on, for the first time since that beautiful sunset on Onderon where he’d gotten to sit with Ahsoka and chat about kriffing_ boys _of all subjects_ _(Lux Bonteri? just bad taste, he’d opined jokingly, but for some reason he’d really meant it — but Rex didn’t really know if Bonteri was bad or good; Rex was going on thirteen years old, but he_ still _felt like he didn’t know anything at all sometimes;)_

_good thing that I am one with the Force, because the Force knows, is, everything;_

_and Ahsoka had laughed before falling into an uneasy silence._

_“Rex?”_

_“Commander?”_

_He hadn’t offended her, had he?_

_“Does this make sense to you?”_

_Sometimes he forgot how very young she was, and how little she knew, just like him._

_“Does what make sense?”_

_“This,” she said, gesturing vaguely around them at the gathering sunset. Her skin was even duskier in the dying light. “I mean, I understand why these people are fighting, and I even understand the Separatist cause to an extent, but I don’t understand why there has to be so much violence . . .” and she trailed off, seemingly unable to finish articulating her feelings._

_Violence was the reason for Rex’s existence, so he hesitated before answering._

_“Good soldiers follow orders,” he told her._

_No, that wasn’t how the memory_ really _went, was it? He never said that._

 _He didn’t think he said that, at least, because he next remembers that she took his hand for comfort and told him all about what the Jedi code taught about attachment and how difficult that often was for her because sometimes it was_ just so hard _not to care for passionate young boys and father figures and older brothers and the million other brothers she fought alongside and all the people who were so brave and so well-intentioned that just kept_ dying _._

 _Her inability to understand made sense to Rex, because he didn’t completely understand, either. But they understood_ each other _. This grounded him in the present and helped him to remember to hope for the future, because he wasn’t alone._

_He couldn’t remember what he told Ahsoka about attachment, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with good soldiers or following orders._

_And somehow, that evening ended with him guiding her home through the growing darkness — the color of her skin had replaced the sunset._

Echoing, echoing —

Cold, hard, painful —

“I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.”

_So yes, Maul was steaming mad; but Rex and Ahsoka were together again, Captain and Commander, like they should be. She was a sight for sore eyes. Surrounded by ranks of shinies, she was his closest friend left in the battalion, and he knew he was certainly the same for her. So he stuck with her — for once allowing himself to relax._

_Because Ahsoka understood. She didn’t know the same way that he didn’t know. But the war was ending; it was the war’s_ sunset _, kissing her sunset-colored skin like he for a half-moment had thought about once when waking up — an odd odd thought; he didn’t really want to kiss his Commander. Good soldiers didn’t do that. But something made him different than the rank and file of his brothers — something that made itself clear from the dyed roots of his hair to the reason he hadn’t reported Cut to GAR authorities to the Commander, who had always meant something to him. She meant more to him than he had ever realized until right now, this very moment._

_She was always on his mind, wasn’t she?_

_She was Ahsoka; the Commander; the sunset; Rex loved his sunsets, his peaceful endings, the slow endings and everything that that old sweet term he had once heard from Shaak Ti,_ “happily ever after”, _connoted._

_The sunset filled his mind._

Everything is connected within the Force. 

“I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force, the Force is with me. I am one with the Force —”

Everything is connected . . . and everything is Ahsoka.

_He heard order 66 called and he heard himself robotically respond; Fives_ was _a good soldier, and Rex realized that the different thing inside of him had never doubted his brother. Now Rex could hear the loud sound of grating metal._

 _I am one with the Force. The Force is with me_.

The connections extinguish and the sunset passes into the night without so much as a warning. Poor Rex. He really doesn’t know about much other than war; of course he didn’t consider what comes after wartime — that the setting of the sun means the rising of a far colder moon. Because the Force has left his mind, and without its gift of prescience, nothing makes sense anymore. Also, the bunk he is lying on is rather cold and hard, and there is a stabbing pain in his left temple. He hears blaster fire so he grasps his own weapons —

 _Thank whatever gods there be_ , because Ahsoka is there, and she is still alive, and therefore he still sees the sunset on Saleucami. Everything is still Ahsoka, and she is in danger, so he shoots without a thought and sends his brothers spinning to the unforgiving ground.

Right now, everything is Ahsoka. He will take time to grieve over his brothers once the night has finished falling. 

**Author's Note:**

> critiques and comments and requests are always lovely and seriously, i do appreciate them so much
> 
> this took me an hour or two so it’s not super polished, but i was extremely excited while writing it because that one moment in “Shattered” — where Ahsoka and Rex connect in the Force — is so inspiring to me. it’s such masterful work on Dave Filoni’s part, and i do believe that Rex couldn’t come away from that experience without changing his view of the Force and Ahsoka. of course, when he comes to he immediately snaps into action, but how? he was coming up from surgery and unconsciousness and ought to be groggy but instead he’s incredibly focused — and in my opinion, it’s because he’s realizing he’s in love with Ahsoka/beginning to fall in love with her after being wrapped up in her mind as closely as he was.


End file.
